Jeff Green, home vs. away

Uncle Jeff has been a bit of a polarizing player in the Thunder fan base. Is he the power forward of the future? Should he come off the bench? Should he be traded? Is he playing a role really well? Whatever you think there, right now, I don’t really care. Because this isn’t about that. More than anything, it’s to just simply look at Jeff Green’s home versus away splits. They’re kind of odd. Observe this spiffy table:

Or if you don’t love the table, I’ve put together this very colorful chart that is highly scientific:

If there is one thing to note, it’s that Green shoots almost 12 percent lower from the field on the road than at home. Reason for this? I have none. Across the board, sans free throw percentage, Green is better at home. This isn’t that unusual, but for some of the splits to be so wide is a little weird. Kevin Durant shoots three percent higher from the field and averages a point more at home. Russell Westbrook is basically dead even across the board. But for Green to dip so drastically from the field, from 3 and in points seems odd to me.

So I went a little deeper. Check out Green’s hot spots:

Keep in mind, one less game on the road than at home, but Green has taken 64 jumpers from 16-23 feet on the road and only 46 at home. At home, Green has taken 139 shots at the rim compared to 114 on the road. And on the road Green has tried 37 shots inside 10 feet, compared to 22 at home. Three-pointers are virtually the same. So I’d say part of it is where Uncle Jeff is taking shots. It’s probably more coincidental than a trend, but obviously you score better at the rim than you do 20 feet from the basket. So if Green is being more aggressive to the rim at home than on the road, he needs to take that same mentality with him away from the Ford Center.

Because if he puts up comparable numbers in away game to home, he’d have a pretty nice stat line. Is this all that important right now? Probably not. But I find little trends like this interesting. Last year, Nenad Krstic was hitting a ton more jumpers at home than away. The reason for it? I have no clue. Maybe it’s a comfort thing. Maybe it’s a confidence issue. Maybe it’s complete coincidence. That’s not my job to figure out. I’m just the guy putting together the charts and graphs and then hoping someone far smarter than me can figure out what’s going on.